Pages tagged "ATL"

This second essay in the Meta-Delusion series introduces another key delusion – “tweaking around the edges” – that helps explain why all of us in the United States are failing to address the climate crisis, ignoring ecological and population overshoot, shutting our eyes to the coming collapses attendant to massively excessive resource extractions, and related issues. The essay also introduces the Hydra-Delusion monster that so captivates us.

This is the first essay in the Meta-Delusion series. Across the world, many if not most climate activists and advocates are falling victim to the Tinkerbell-Effect (TE). This means that the world will slide past the stabilization boundaries and do what it promised it would not do — that is, the world will be responsible for breaking the climate system. Moreover, it’s because many of us, particularly here in the US where the Tinkerbell-Effect is most pandemic, have been fooling ourselves.

For growing numbers of Americans, tracking the exploding Trump-Russia scandal has become a necessity, like slowing for a major multi-vehicle pileup. Rachel Maddow delivers bombshell reports almost every weeknight, each plotline adding more gasoline to the conflagration that is consuming our political system. As Senator John McCain has offered: “There’s a lot more shoes to drop from this centipede.”

"Donald Trump and his band of Banana Republicans are turning our country into a banana republic."– Swami Beyondananda

Is the honeymoon over yet?

Perhaps a better question is, what kind of honeymoon follows a shotgun wedding? For the past two months, I have explored how the failure of neoliberalism helped fuel the perfect storm that put Donald Trump in the White House, and how given the choice between status quo and disruptive change, the body politic chose the latter.

For those who know we are in a real climate emergency, Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory comes as a devastating shock and blow, as he intends to eviscerate climate protection and ramp up fossil fuel extraction. The world needs to be cutting carbon drastically now, yet the United States is accelerating towards the brick wall of climate chaos. Is there any plausible climate emergency response worth considering in this deepening crisis?

This petition will go to the MacArthur Foundation and to other philanthropies.

Dear President Stasch and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,

Since your philanthropy has decided this year to have a consequent impact on the biggest problems facing all of us, you have opened the opportunity to respond to the most critical and complex challenge we must face: the climate crisis. Climate stabilization is absolutely necessary for sustaining a viable future for our civilization.

I am writing to explain the opportunity the MacArthur Foundation now has to produce an effective response for climate stabilization.

Mounting evidence indicates that we actually face a climate emergency, not represented in the IPCC Reports, IPCC Budgets, or the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Climate change is already dangerous at just 1°C of warming — major impacts are emerging now (such as polar ice melt and extreme weather) that are far worse than anticipated. Although the Paris Agreement appears to adequately address the crisis, its measures fall alarmingly short: voluntary pledges only slow the increase in warming, bringing us 3.5°C warming this century. It allows carbon pollution to continue for decades, vastly inconsistent with its 1.5-2°C goal. Moreover, it relies on unproven, farfetched technologies to suck carbon from the atmosphere after far exceeding emissions’ limits.

Contrast this with a recent study, “The Sky’s Limit” from Oil Change International, which finds that the potential carbon emissions from the world’s current fossil fuel operations would take us beyond 2°C of warming. Put simply: to destroy civilization, we just need to keep doing what we are doing; to salvage a livable future, we must act boldly and soon.

Yet our political leaders and the American public do not understand what measures we must take to respond effectively. We don’t know how fast we must decarbonize our energy systems, nor by what means and mechanisms. The misinformation, distortion, and superficial explanations from our nation’s political system and journalists have obscured reality. Even while the US must lead the world, we are stalling and caught in political gridlock.

But we do have an opportunity to shift the impasse: the 2016 Democratic Platform calls for a Climate Summit, wherein the dramatic scope, scale, and urgency of the crisis can be explained and validated. It cannot be overemphasized: public and political understanding is essential for effective climate stabilization. At this time, nothing short of a Summit will suffice.

However, it is unlikely our new president could effectively fund, stage, or broadcast the Climate Summit. Nor is it likely she could lead the nation to climate stability following the Summit. That is because: (1) she does not have the political capital, (2) she would be perceived as politically biased where your Foundation would be considered objective and credible, (3) sufficient public funding would be difficult to obtain, (4) with the new administration as sponsor and lead, results would not be accepted by the public.

There is nowhere else to turn, but to philanthropy. The MacArthur Foundation could be the funding agent for the Climate Summit. Its allocation of $100 mil­lion for 100&Change, not limited to non-profit agencies, makes that plausible. The neutral MacArthur Foundation’s staging and results could be confidently promulgated publicly.

So I am asking for your help, to fund an effective Climate Summit that leads the way to effective responses that actually stabilize our climate. And it is necessary that the Summit occur early in the next administration; in time to guarantee a viable future for our children. Because how we act now and in these next few years will determine that future for all of us. If the climate is not stabilized, then all the other good work of Philanthropy would go for naught on a rapidly warming planet. Everything we care about is at stake; please help lead us to a viable, clean, and healthy future.

Please share these letters we are sending with your staff and Board of Directors.

Today we already live in the middle of a genuine climate emergency. Yet is this perceived, understood, or discussed anywhere? Despite the overwhelming case, little is being done to eliminate the fossil fuel Goliath and stabilize our climate.

With government gridlocked and business even adding more sand to the gears, policy responses are ridiculously inadequate. Can Philanthropy be the David to the fossil fuel’s Goliath? Where else can we find the influence and resources that could fulfill a David role and support a coordinated, broad-based people’s campaign? Who else could create the “slingshot heard round-the-world” to down the behemoth?

Dear President Stasch and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,

It is with great hope and expectation that I noted that you have moved the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in the direction of tackling big problems and working to have a transformative impact on the biggest ones we all face. While you mention climate change in your announcements of 100&Change, I would like to ask you personally to fund solutions to the climate crisis. The reasons are many.

First, we exist in a global warming emergency now, and we are doing far too little to stabilize climate in the US or world-wide.

Next, if we do not stabilize climate then all of the other crises we face are made much worse. One of our best known climate scientists, Katharine Hayhoe said it best: “We can pour all of our money, all of our effort and everything we have into a bucket of humanitarian efforts, but it will not be enough. Because the bucket has a hole in it. That hole is climate change. And it is getting bigger.” See the three-minute film here.

Third, climate change threatens us all with extinction, and extinction of our living systems upon which we depend utterly. Civilization is at stake “right now” as are many of the other creatures that share our beautiful home with us.

Finally, climate must be stabilized within a context of justice, equity, and fairness for all of us and for the rest of life. And justice, equity, and fairness have no future, indeed no hope without a stable climate and a sustainable humanity.

There has never been a crisis like this climate crisis. Everything is at stake because of it. The climate crisis needs the focus of 100&Change and all of the resources that can be brought to bear from other Philanthropies that will partner with you.

We must phase out fossil fuels as quickly as humanly possible for a livable climate.

ExxonMobile Refinery, Torrance, CA. Photo: Michael Light.

WE MUST PHASE OUT FOSSIL FUELS NOW!

Few people, even in the global warming movement, understand the scope, scale, and urgency with which we must now operate to protect our livable planet. A pervasive pluralistic ignorance keeps people from admitting we are in a crisis. We now need a compelling multi-faceted Mobilization Campaign to inform and activate a critical mass of Americans, so we can: (1) achieve US leadership in an Emergency Climate Mobilization, (2) price carbon-based fuels and eliminate their subsidies, (3) incentivize for renewable energy, and (4) keep fossil fuels in the ground.

The gravity of our situation is clear and convincing. Our task ahead is clear: we either phase-out fossil fuels now or we end civilization and humanity. Here is the tough reality: we have an emergency and we must mobilize now. All hands on deck!

We must build a large Climate Emergency Coalition to demand an immediate emergency mobilizationas an over-riding US priority. The aim is Zero Net Carbon within a decade in the United States, feasible with a WW2 type mobilization.

The Paris Agreement won't save us

It is important to realize that the Paris Climate Agreement itself makes the case for emergency response. The Agreement merely gives the impression that the crisis is being addressed. It is good that the nations agreed on a major target (1.5-2°C)—but the deal allows them to pollute for decades, leaving us on course of 3.5°C warming, threatening humanity and most life. There is no requirement to upgrade commitments before 2030.

So what gives? The Agreement is counting on miracles and magic to save us. Really. Rather than requiring dramatic reductions starting now, the Agreement assumes that unproven technologies (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) will down the road “suck carbon” from the atmosphere. Pollute now, clean up decades later. The idea: grow lots of trees and biomass to absorb carbon (every year, an area 1-3 times the size of India), burn it in special power plants that capture the carbon emissions, compress the CO2 and pipe it long distances to then bury it. Kevin Anderson describes the absurdity of these proposals.

Bottom line: Paris’s target can only be possibly met with an immediate carbon phase-out, with reality-based carbon drawdown methods of regenerative land practices, while understanding current drawdown limitations.

Carbon dioxide stays in our atmosphere for centuries, so it is a cumulative problem.

Chart: Scripps Institution of Oceanography

THE EMERGENCY CASE:

First, warming from CO2 emissions is irreversible on any human timescale—it takes centuries for CO2 to be re-absorbed back into the earth. So CO2 is a cumulative problem. Each decade we keep emitting carbon at this rate adds another 0.25°C / 0.5°F, increasing our risk of runaway heating.

We are already committed to further inevitable warming even if we quit all fossil fuels today. Two reasons: (1) Particulate pollution (another pollutant from fossil fuels) actually masks some warming—so when we DO eventually quit fossil fuels, an estimated 0.5°C more warming is coming. (2) Further warming will come from the oceans, called “thermal inertia,” when they finally give their absorbed heat to the atmosphere, adding an estimated 0.6°C. Added to the 1°C existing warming, we are already past Paris’s target.

The 2016 off-the-charts temperature spike even alarms climate scientists. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research responded: "We are in a kind of climate emergency now."

Chart: Stephan Rahmstorf

Warming is in overdrive. Like a broken record, global heat records are being repeatedly shattered, month after month, year after year. January 2016, then February were the hottest months ever. 2015 was the hottest year, as was 2014. 2016 is on track beat 2015. The current El Nino weather pattern only partially explains this temperature surge.

Sea level rise will swamp coastal cities. New research on sea level rise portends complete catastrophe if we do not slash fossil fuels now. James Hansen has warned that without “emergency cooperation among nations,” Greenland and Antarctica could melt ten times faster than formerly known, “resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.” Irreversible ice-melt thresholds are being crossed now. It looks likely that we face 3-6 feet of sea-level rise this century, so we will have to move inland. This interactive map, shows the effects on Miami, from 1-10 feet.

Oceanic threats await marine life. If we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere, the oceans will collapse. Recent research clearly shows that even if we could magically pull CO2 out of thin air in the future, it would still acidify our oceans, poisoning marine life (explained here and here). Ocean warming is causing two major threats to marine ecosystems: (1) coral bleaching (a major bleaching event is going on now), and (2) deoxygenation. Only dramatic emission reductions starting now will save the oceans. No ocean life, no us—it’s that simple.

Methane “natural gas” use is a catastrophic bridge to climate tipping points. Its greenhouse gas impact is far stronger than previously realized: over 100-times more potent than CO2 when first released. In our climate emergency, what happens in the next decade that matters most. New research shows massive methane leakage across the US in recent years (coinciding with the fracking boom). So this methane increase matters a lot. All fossil fuels must be kept in the ground, methane included.

Clouds provide far less cooling than assumed. New research shows that clouds contain more water and less ice than previously thought. Watery clouds reflect less solar light than icy clouds, heating the planet more. This discovery suggests that temperatures will rise faster from greenhouse gas pollution than previously forecast.

Large impacts pose high risk. Michael E. Mann’s “'Fat Tail' of Climate Change Risk" article makes it obvious that the risk of runaway greenhouse warming is so high that any able person would be motivated to help with an Emergency Climate Mobilization.

The over-determined conclusion one would have to draw from these best-expert sources would be that YES!, we must dedicate ourselves to completely phase out fossil fuels in the US within ten years, and realize that the route toward such a radical transformation of our culture is an Emergency Climate Mobilization.

For a more in-depth examination of the emergency case, see David Spratt’s “Climate Reality Check” report.

No Carbon Budget Left

The stated function of carbon budgets are to provide an amount of "burnable" carbon, while maintaining a likelihood of staying under the 2°C heat ceiling.

Yet the carbon budget concept is a dangerous illusion:

Major impacts are becoming apparent at just 1°C warming.

There is an unacceptable risk that feedbacks will be triggered before 2°C.

ESSENTIAL ACTIONS

For climate stabilization well under 2°C, we must start now to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by about 10 percent each year, until fossil fuel phase-out is complete in a decade, and globally in fifteen years, quickly transitioning from fossil fuels to low carbon energy.

The time for energy democracy has come: wherever possible communities should collectively control the conversion to clean energy.

The US must lead. The US must embrace the 1.5-2°C limit, and lead the global low carbon mobilization. Fossil fuel reductions must begin now in industrialized nations,[1] and within a few years in developing nations.[2]

Enacting effective policies to facilitate this transition within a decade will, in effect, catalyze a wartime-speed mobilization effort. The first step is to get the emergency situation into the cultural conversation, so the emergency is perceived, declared, and acted upon with an Emergency Climate Mobilization. This is aim of the Climate Emergency Coalition.

RESPONDING IN EMERGENCY MODE

Importantly, humans can and do rise above fear and respond. The climate movement has mistakenly believed that people would panic, become paralyzed, or fall into resignation if they understood the looming climate threat. The widespread notion that people panic in emergencies is not corroborated by evidence, research, or human behavior.

Research shows that we behave cooperatively and rapidly—even with extraordinary teamwork and collaboration—when trained or given accurate information about disasters and constructive response options. Emergency mode is characterized by an extreme focus of attention and resources on working productively to respond to the emergency.

So awakening citizens to the danger and providing responses that deal with the scope, scale and urgency of the crisis is necessary. If that is done effectively, we can expect constructive cooperation and mobilization to avert climate catastrophe.

Knowing what to do and preparing facilitates “eustress” (a positive form of stress) in emergencies. The seemingly impossible can be accomplished in extreme situations when emotion, purpose, and enthusiasm are combined.

Some emergencies last years, and we are in such a “long emergency” now. Examples have included: wars, the Great Depression, nations under occupation, and collapsing empires. In long emergencies, a combination of purpose, pacing, and persistence is needed. Human societies have often exhibited heroic persistence in very long emergencies, even when situations were very dire.

Humans evolved in tribes, and group success was vital to the survival of each individual. Very importantly, it’s within our nature to work together in groups.

MOBILIZING FOR RAPID TRANSITION

The type of emergency response needed in our situation is called mobilization. We refer to it as an Emergency Climate Mobilization.

What is mobilization? Mobilization is a coming together as a people with a common cause—a rapid emergency restructuring of a modern industrial economy. It involves all citizens and impacts all areas of society. It’s nothing less than a comprehensive social and industrial metamorphosis.

Mobilization summons a sense of collective destiny and moral purpose. Importantly, it is not an indiscriminate use of government power. Rather, it is a specific economic approach that directs the collective force of industry away from petro-consumerism towards a complete fossil fuel phase-out and transformation to a zero carbon society.

We are calling for a society-wide Emergency Climate Mobilization aiming to achieve zero carbon emissions in the US within a decade and globally in fifteen years. We see this as the fastest possible phase-out of fossil fuels in a “long emergency” mobilization mode, in which we can achieve far more than what is now commonly thought as possible.

First Phase

We as a country and as a planet face a fundamental threat. … Until we start with that conversation, it's very hard for me to see how we ultimately lead to the national policies that are going to be required, much less the international policies that are also going to be required.[1]

This outline proposal shows how a modest sum—$500,000 for a one-year demonstration—can prove the necessity for a national “emergency climate mobilization” and build a Climate Emergency Coalition with partnering organizations. Following demonstration, the US can be quickly galvanized into a consensus on Emergency Climate Mobilization within the timeframe required to stabilize the climate, while including a justice and equity framework.

To respond effectively to the climate crisis, we need an all-hands-on-deck Climate Mobilization to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions at wartime speed. Because of the nature of the looming climate crisis[2], the fate of civilization and of our living systems hinges on a Climate Mobilization response. The over-determined data shows that there is actually no remaining carbon budget, therefore we must phase-out fossil fuels now!

Informing, Engaging, and Galvanizing Americans

Relating for Real Change

It is through our web of associations and relationships that we best develop understanding and emotional response—by arriving at a social interpretation of the data. Sociologist Robert Brulle, Drexel University, says that engaging people face-to-face is "the only way to achieve real, lasting change [for the climate]."[3] We are relational creatures, and we get involved when people that we know and respect are involved. Explaining climate change must be personal and interactive—virtual or social media are insufficient for organizing citizens and expanding the movement.

A consensus on US Climate Mobilization must come quickly. If achieved within a couple of years, the US can achieve the target of Net Zero Carbon within a decade. To achieve the degree of transformation required—even including the conservative Congress—we only need 3-4% of the population joining the call for mobilization with us. That means recruiting enough mobilizers through an Education and Advocacy Campaign that provides personal, face-to-face dialogue, and moral conversations. There are already tens of thousands of faith social halls and civic auditoriums ready to host this cultural conversation. The initiative galvanizes those most concerned about the climate threat, thus building a decisive Climate Coalition with partner organizations. Change of this magnitude can only happen through organizing while raising and deepening public awareness.

Citizens need to understand how quickly and effectively we must respond to avert climate chaos. They must appreciate the details of the encroaching climate crisis, the necessity of an all-out mobilization, the advantages of a carbon price and its affordability, climate justice issues, and why US leadership is crucial. We explain the scope, scale and urgency of the crisis; in addition we explain why the Coalition is the necessary response to uniquely meet these daunting challenges.

The curriculum is riveting and inspiring. It is designed to catalyze action and precipitate appropriate responses.

First Phase of the Climate Emergency Coalition Campaign

The First Phase of the Climate Emergency Coalition Campaign will employ the existing southwest network of Interfaith Power and Light to coordinate the necessary personal conversations and education at their disposal through the thousands of venues available: congregation social halls, civic auditoriums, and public meeting places across those states. The states include Utah (convening), Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Tennessee.[4]

The $500,000 budget includes salaries for a Project Coordinator and six State Coordinators, consulting fees, and curriculum development (includes the guidance of leading scientists).

The Demonstration will quickly lead to the adoption of the full CEC Campaign nationwide to achieve consensus on mobilization within a two-year period.

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The global warming emergency is the most critical moral issue of our time. The Association for the Tree of Life (ATL) is working on effective responses that meet the scope, scale, and urgency of the crisis. ATL is a lead organization calling for and catalyzing the broad-based media, educational, and grassroots campaigns resulting in Emergency Climate Mobilization that produces net zero US carbon emissions within a decade. ATL is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization.